Introduction

This is a story about the power of imagination, about one of the biggest challenges facing the UK right now and how a small charity with huge ambitions refused to stay quiet about the injustice of child poverty.

Objectives

Since 1965, the Child Poverty Action Group has worked on behalf of every child living in poverty in the UK to fight ‘for the radical improvement in the standard of living of families in poverty’. Through their research, lobbying and campaigning, they were responsible for the introduction of child benefits in 1975, and defended it again in 1991, were instrumental in the creation of the Child Poverty Act of 2010 which lifted 1.1 million children out of poverty, and pioneered the UK welfare rights movement.

Despite this, in the UK today, 4.2 million children live in poverty. 29% of all children in the country, a number that will only increase as families face rising costs and budgets are stretched even further with the cost-of-living crisis.

Child Poverty Action Group needed to cut through the noise to bring child poverty back to the top of the agenda and once again make it a key issue for the public, and the government as a result. However, the cost-of-living crisis and poverty aren’t the only topics dominating the headlines. The war in Ukraine, climate crisis, refugee crisis, culture wars and political unrest are leading to interest in the news falling from 63% in 2017 to 51% in 2022.

Child Poverty Action Group couldn’t rely on their usual channels to reach audiences. They needed a new idea, one that couldn’t be ignored and one that would elicit an emotional response.

Strategic and Creative Approach

Even without the issue of news fatigue, bringing the heart-breaking facts of child poverty to life isn’t a straightforward ask, it is an incredibly complex and potentially divisive issue. So, rather than tackle the whole spectrum of child poverty at once, we had to find an initial way to grab people’s attention, something that they could relate to and something that would engage and enrage people universally, no matter which side of the voting line they stand on; and it would be a tragic true story that would give us that way in.

In our initial research, we read and heard countless stories about the impact poverty has on children, but one stood out. A story of a young boy at a school in Lewisham, London who didn’t qualify for free school meals and who pretended to eat out of an empty lunchbox so his friends wouldn’t find out his family didn’t have any food at home.

No child should go hungry, the impact of sub-standard nutrition and hunger in childhood will last a lifetime physically, emotionally, socially and financially, but what made this story all the more tragic was the way a child’s imagination was being used to combat a brutal reality.

Because a child’s imagination is an awe-inspiring thing, a special power that can take you on travels into magical lands and tell incredible stories; but it can’t fill an empty belly. We took this insight and an award-winning team, to create a multi-channel campaign across TV, print, out-of-home, digital, and social that brought the shocking realities of child poverty to life.

The principal element of our campaign was a 60” film. Produced by Cannes Lion-winning production company, Smuggler, the film takes us on a fantastical journey with our hero through a school lunch hall. However, instead of lunchboxes with simple sandwiches and apples, we see mountains of fruit, endless popcorn, lobsters and doughnuts appearing like magic, all set to an original re-record of the iconic song 'Food, Glorious Food.' However, as our hero sits down and opens his lunchbox, instead of another incredible food surprise, our scene changes and we see him pretending to eat, and he is now sitting alone.

This was supported by a national print and out-of-home campaign that juxtaposed illustrations inspired by children’s imaginations with hard-hitting headlines on the realities of child poverty; and allowed us to open up the conversation beyond food poverty, such as housing and access to toys.

Throughout the making of this campaign, we worked to ensure that our depiction of child poverty was sensitive and faithful to the realities that families face. We filmed in a North London school where 1 in 4 pupils receive free school meals and our cast was based on the makeup of the school’s intake, but to ensure our film had the impact we hoped it would, we also needed to guarantee the reactions of the cast were authentic. To do that, every single piece of food was real, we kept cameras and sound rolling at all times to capture real laughter and interactions between the children and, for the devasting final scene, to capture the moment the rest of the cast left our hero all alone.

Impact 

The film has been seen by 5.2 million people, an unimaginable reach for a small charity’s child poverty message and it's been shared by Members of Parliament. Social listening showed an immediate surge in online conversation around Child Poverty Action Group, with a 312% uplift compared to the previous month. Even more significantly, the campaign spread both nationally and around the world and drove a 153% increase in donations to CPAG compared to the same period the previous year.

Finally, the campaign was applauded by children’s charities across the world, from Save the Children to US-based Charity, Every Meal, for ‘reaching new audiences and putting this crucial issue at the front and centre of people's minds.’